The Republican Party Is Screwed, Day 2

In which we learn that, if the GOP had a soul, they'd be fighting over it with the Kochs.

It seems like just yesterday that we were discussing our modest proposal for the Republican party. Essentially, that the formal institution of the Republican party be converted into a kind of amiable logistical clearing-house from an actual political operation. Wait, it was just yesterday.

Anyway, it seems that obvious anagram Reince Priebus is not going gently into his inevitable obsolescence.

The fight between the RNC's chairman and the political operatives affiliated with Charles and David Koch over who controls the rich treasury of data on likely Republican voters has raised fundamental questions about what role the party's central committee — even under the best management — can hope to play in the age of super-PACs. And it raises an even more fundamental question of how you define a political party. Super-PACs emerged as a major new force in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010. They now populate a political landscape that has been radically changed, leaving political parties weaker than they have ever been.

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Good luck, Mighty Mouse.

The core issue, from Priebus' point of view, is one of loyalty and allegiance. The RNC is a permanent entity, committed to the Republican Party without question. The Koch network is too independent from the party to be trusted with possession of the GOP's most valuable core assets. If the Kochs — whose political history is steeped more in libertarianism than it is in any loyalty to the Republican Party — decided next week to use their database to benefit only their massive multinational corporation, they could do so.

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OK, I think the loyalty to "libertarianism" runs about a half-inch deep in the Kochs at this point. As long as they can go largely untaxed, and as long as they can continue to get rich pillaging the planet without being inconvenienced by the rest of us, I don't think they're going to go rogue on gay marriage or legal weed in any serious way. But if I have to pick sides, I'm lining up with the obvious anagram. At least, there's something vaguely small-d democratic about the way the formal structures of political parties are organized. The new complex of private empires sponsoring pet candidates who are beyond anyone else's control inevitably has a deforming effect on our elections, and on our political culture at large. (And, sooner or later, it's going to happen to the Democratic party as well.) If Reince Priebus wants to register a complaint, he can address it to A. Kennedy, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C.